The man credited with inventing the Hawaiian pizza, triggering endless debate around the world about the legitimacy of pineapple on the Italian staple, has died aged 83.
Sam Panopoulos emigrated from Greece to Canada in 1954 at the age of 20 and ran several restaurants in Ontario with his two brothers.
We just put it on, just for the fun of it
One was in Chatham, about 290km from Toronto. It served typical American fare such as burgers and fries as well as Chinese dishes, and in the early 1960s Panopoulos decided to start offering pizzas, which had become popular in the US.
His most famous creation would result from an experiment: one day Panopoulos decided to put tinned pineapple on a pizza to find out how it would taste.
“We just put it on, just for the fun of it, see how it was going to taste,” he told the BBC earlier this year. “We were young in the business and we were doing a lot of experiments.”
He and his brothers liked the contrast between the sweetness of the pineapple and the savoury flavour of the ham.